SECTION VII POSTSCRIPT ~ AFTERWORD: COMMUNITY AND eXPLANATION IN SPACE HISTORY (?) Martin collins The deep significance of certain problems for the advance of mathematical science in general and the important role which they play in the work of the individual investigator are not to be denied. As long as a branch of science offers an abun- dance of problems, so long is it alive; a lack of problems foreshadows extinction or the cessation of independent development. Just as every human undertaking pursues certain objects, so also mathematical research requires its problems. It is by the solution of problems that the investigator tests the temper of his steel; he finds new methods and new outlooks, and gains a wider and freer horizon. —David Hilbert, “Mathematical Problems,” 1900 ilbert, a pivotal figure in mathematics in the late 19th and early 20th cen- Hturies, addressed these thoughts in 1900 to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris—a quadrennial, premier gathering of practitio- ners.1 In this year, poised at the crossing between centuries, Hilbert and his colleagues self-consciously took stock as to professional ethos, standards, and research. Holding center stage, Hilbert presented (in what was recognized then and since as) one of the most significant templates for research in math- ematics, providing a conceptual outlook for his discipline and a list of 23 out- standing problems that engaged, in different ways, the foundations of the field. These problems, for Hilbert, served as vital links among practice, theory, and tacit notions of professional community—and, more broadly, connected all of these to european culture. Hilbert’s moment, of course, is not ours. The early modernist tempera- ment, confidently ascendant, shines through—the application of reason seems to confront few limits. Too, the “profession” as social and intellectual instrument 1. David Hilbert, “Mathematical Problems: Lecture Delivered before the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris in 1900” (trans. by Dr. Maby Winton Newson), Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 8 (1902): 437–479. 604 CRITICAL issUES IN THE HISTORY OF SpaCEFLIGHT (with scientific disciplines as model) seems to promise a progressive, well-oiled engine to extend and secure reason’s reach—indefinitely. Hilbert’s moment reminds us of the arc (choose your geometric tracing) from then to now and of the undermining of that world’s foundational assumptions. Late modern and postmodern perspectives have made problematic the relationship among researcher, subject, and knowledge claims—the ontology and epistemology of the “true” and the “objective”—as well as the idea of the profession as self- contained and self-regulated in its pursuits. Hilbert’s thoughts and their context provide one of many possible points of departure for reflecting on notions of discipline and profession in space his- tory. The aim here is not an extended comparison with that earlier example, but a simple reminder of the history of these inventions and the complex of issues embedded within them. Nor is this afterword a critique of the seminar’s papers, separately or collectively, nor is it a meta-literature review. Rather, it is an attempt to foreground assumptions that lingered backstage in many of the papers, assumptions that speak to our sense of what space history is and does. The “(?)” in the title above signals one part of this examination: How and why we self-identify as “space history” rather than as space “something else”—and what such a choice implies. All of these bits of critique, of course, are right out of the big playbook of analytic moves—a (pseudo-)knowing voice taking us from background to fore- ground, dark to light, fuzzy to sharp—yet necessary and useful as part of think- ing about “critical issues.” Reviews of this type are the rare occasions when “we” and “I”—as much as our subject matter—are preeminently our concern. This discussion will touch on two intertwined themes central to notions of discipline and profession (hereafter, for concision, i will use “discipline” to speak for both), yet largely submerged in this “Critical Issues” conference: community and explanation (our equivalent of Hilbert’s problems). The for- mer, with a nod to Robert Merton, refers to norms and shared practices, and the latter to how we conceptually establish ourselves in relation to history and related disciplines and how we frame the aims of inquiry. In outline, these themes almost are banally familiar; in application to space history, they may illuminate “we” choices that should be explicit rather than implicit. Community Is there something missing in our sense of community, in the way we approach our research domain? Such a question may seem off. The very fact of this seminar, of a thoughtful focus on critical issues, signaled health and intellectual robustness. It reflected a shared interest (at least to the level of subject matter) among scholars from a range of disciplines. In narrative and argument, the individual papers were AFTERWORD: COMMUNITY AND EXPLANATION . 605 “right on,” embodying a knowledgeable engagement with the best method- ological practice. And as a topical map of the field, the seminar provided a thorough survey. Yet there were two prominent lacunae: a collective self-awareness and openness on the importance of methodology—of presenting, testing, and cri- tiquing the conceptual tools that define a field as a domain of inquiry—and of the core aims of research. In short, the seminar shied away from “dis- cipline”—of explicit correlation between methods and aims, a communal orientation and set of commitments that distinguish a discipline from a sub- ject area. Open, systematic exchange, rumination, and struggle on points of method and explanatory focus (and attaching value to such) are integral to community practice within a discipline. To suggest the relative absence of such a mindset at the seminar is not to cast aspersion, but to bring to the fore an important choice: discipline (or more accurately, subdiscipline) or subject specialty? This choice was a largely unspoken tension within the seminar: we assumed discipline but performed as subject specialty. Does this distinction or choice matter? Space history as subject specialty can be commodious, welcoming a range of scholarship under a big tent—the seminar was a showcase. Under this mode of practice, we can learn from each other, then head back to our respective subfields—a kind of intellectual tourist model of research. And that may be enough. Space history best may be pur- sued as loose confederation sans discipline. But does the notion of discipline offer us opportunities worth considering? I’ll highlight a few issues associated with method first, and then with aims and explanation. Method, of course, is not an end in itself. In recent years, its reputation has edged, on occasion, into a preoccupation with dreary, constant self-reference and culture-war comedy (recall Alan Sokal’s parody of postmodernism and deconstructionism in Social Text, a journal edited by the noted Stanley Fish).2 And, of course, to refer to method abstractly, without accounting for the many variants that have effloresced since the early 1960s, is to risk reduction and simplicity (Margaret Weitekamp’s essay, nonsimplistically, gives one over- view of this landscape). But the point for us is primarily attitudinal—to note that a primary motivation for the boon in critique was a fundamental (and from a disciplinary perspective, necessary) question: How do we know and justify what we know (about the world)?3 Taking that question seriously is not to turn historians (or other disciplines represented at the seminar) into phi- 2. Alan Sokal, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum gravity,” Social Text 46/47 (1996): 217–252. 3. For one recent overview of the centrality of epistemology and of the genealogy of critique in relation to the modern and postmodern, see Bruno Latour, “Has Critique Run Out of Steam: From Matters of fact to matters of concern,” Critical Inquiry 30 (2004): 225–248. 606 CRITICAL issUES IN THE HISTORY OF SpaCEFLIGHT losophers, but to foreground the importance of method in any discipline’s practice—in establishing the constructs and categories through which we do research. Such a concern, for example, was at the heart of the formation of science and technology studies. There, method served two functions: to ele- vate epistemological issues as just noted and, equally important, as a focus for creating a sense of community among a congeries of disciplines. Method and explicit talk about method provided a means for drawing disciplines together and connecting and building on each community’s research perspectives. This orientation and the norm which is its corollary led to the designation of “stud- ies” to characterize this research enterprise. With this “Critical Issues” seminar, space history, i think, faces, à la Yogi Berra, the simple recognition that there is indeed a fork in the road.4 The seminar was notable in that this norm regarding methodology (making how we do research as much a part of the discussion as the subject of research) was largely absent. How, for example, do we fruitfully interconnect history, polit- ical science, sociology, and policy studies (the four major disciplines repre- sented at the seminar)? What are the issues arising from—the goals for—such interconnection? Are we after merely some vague expansion of “context”? Or can explanatory aims be integrated? Are there research projects that emerge from such interconnection that confront basic issues of historical change and explanation? To entertain these (or similar) questions is to probe the possibili- ties of discipline and space history as multidisciplinary crossroad. The supercilious “(?)” i keep pinning on the rump of space history is a sug- gestion that self-description matters—as it did with science and technology stud- ies, women’s studies, and other domains of research—that it is a marker of our notion of community (subject specialty or [sub]discipline); goals; and organized, professional self-reflection.